A tale of two gaming laptops: The x17 vs. the Blade Mk2

The new Blade is good, but it's still stuck between two worlds.

How does the Razer Blade Mk2 (right) stand up to a heavy, powerful gaming laptop?

Andrew Cunningham

Razer's Blade gaming laptop is nothing if not unique. The first version of the attractive-but-expensive laptop launched at a whopping $2,800 and wasn't the fastest laptop on the block. It tried to make up for it with a stylish design and unique touchscreen-turned-trackpad with configurable buttons.

The revised Blade doesn't change this equation much, but it is a nice refinement of what came before. More power-efficient chips from Intel and Nvidia (as well as a redesigned ventilation system) help with heat issues while boosting performance. A slight price drop (to $2,500) helps with the pricing issue.

To help see where the Blade falls in context, we'll be comparing its looks, its build quality, and its performance to a more conventional gaming laptop—Digital Storm was kind enough to send us one of their x17 gaming laptops for comparison. The x17, which is really just a branded version of Clevo's P170EM, is a gaming laptop in the traditional sense: big, bulky, and only relatively "portable."

If you're looking to hang up a big brick like the x17 in favor of something a bit more svelte, does the Blade have the performance to replace one of these monsters?

Micro-review: The DigitalStorm x17 (Clevo P170EM)

Enlarge/ The DigitalStorm x17, based on Clevo's P170EM, is a monster in every sense of the word.

$1854 (note that the current model at this price has an upgraded Core i7 3630QM CPU, but is otherwise identical)

Other perks

Webcam, Kensington lock slot, backlit keyboard, DVD burner

This boutique computer from Digital Storm is a traditional gaming laptop, which is to say that it's about as much like a desktop crammed into a laptop's body as is physically possible. This means you get a wide range of accoutrements—a beefy, high-end GPU, a fast quad-core CPU, and plenty of ports and display hookups—but it definitely costs you in terms of size and weight. At 8.6 pounds and 1.78 inches at its thickest point, this thing feels like it should come with a warning about team lifting. It's a laptop made to be carried to LAN parties, but hauling it in a shoulder bag all day would likely result in permanent disability.

This thickness does also enable some desktop-like upgrade options, though: our model came with a 750GB spinning hard drive, but there's a completely separate drive bay that could be used to add an aftermarket SSD to speed the computer up, or another HDD for purposes of configuring a RAID array. The two RAM slots are easily accessible. The GPU is on an MXM daughterboard, making it (at least theoretically) possible to upgrade your GPU in the future. The CPU is socketed, also theoretically allowing for easy drop-in upgrades as long as your new CPU uses the same socket. Dig further and you can find two RAM slots and a slot for an mSATA SSD. Only a few Phillips head screws separate the user from most of these upgrades, bringing a small degree of desktop customizability to something a little more portable.

Enlarge/ This is what it looks like when you put a desktop in a laptop's body. Among its many ports, the x17 has DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort connectors.

Enlarge/ On the right, an optical drive, headphone, microphone, line-out and line-in jacks, and a USB 2.0 port.

Andrew Cunningham

This desktop-style modularity also brings with it a desktop-style array of ports and extras. Along the sides of the laptop are two USB 3.0 ports, one combo USB 3.0/eSATA port, one USB 2.0 port, an Ethernet jack, a mini Firewire port, a card reader, an optical drive, and separate headphone, microphone, line-in, and line-out jacks. DisplayPort, HDMI, and DVI ports are all located on the back of the laptop, meaning this computer should support up to three external displays—one over DisplayPort and two over HDMI and DVI.

Though we appreciate the laptop's upgradeability, we've got to dock it points for general fit and finish. There's no question that it's very solidly built, and its 17.3-inch 1080p screen is bright and colorful with decent (if not exceptional) viewing angles. The first major point of contention is the backlit keyboard. It's not a chiclet keyboard like we see in so many newer laptops, which isn't a bad thing in and of itself. The problem is that it's often unresponsive—and some keys are worse than others. We suspect this will vary a little from laptop to laptop, but in ours, keys like A and S were especially resistant to input. It makes typing slow and deliberate, and while we've seen many mushy or unsatisfying keyboards over the years we've rarely run into one that actively resisted our efforts to type on it.

Enlarge/ Even the power brick in this thing is huge. From left to right: original Xbox 360 adapter, x17 adapter, Razer Blade adapter, and an iPhone 4S.

Andrew Cunningham

We also had intermittent issues with the single-band 802.11n Wi-Fi card in the laptop, which would occasionally drop its connection to (or refuse to connect to) our Netgear WNDR3700 router. This problem persisted in both Windows 7 and Windows 8 using the latest drivers available for the device. It hasn't been a problem for us through the course of innumerable laptop, tablet, and smartphone reviews, so we're inclined to blame either the laptop itself or the Realtek Wi-Fi chip it uses.

Internals and battery life

The benefit to having such a huge laptop is that there's plenty of room for beefy components, and the Digital Storm laptop doesn't disappoint on that front. Our review unit uses a 2.3GHz Intel Core i7-3610QM—it's not the fastest quad-core mobile CPU that Intel makes, but it's still quite zippy. More pertinent to gamers is its AMD Radeon HD 7970M with 2GB of GDDR5 RAM on a 256-bit memory interface, a powerful chip that's just too big to fit in a more conventional laptop.

Our review unit also includes a 7200RPM 750GB spinning hard drive and 16GB of RAM. That hard drive is the machine's biggest bottleneck. While it's easy enough to insert your own aftermarket SSD, it would be nice to see at least an SSD cache in a machine this expensive.

To save power, the laptop makes use of AMD's Enduro graphics switching technology, which is roughly analogous to Nvidia's Optimus. It dynamically switches between the dedicated GPU and Intel's integrated graphics, delivering better battery life when possible and better performance when needed.

The fly in the ointment here is that Enduro isn't quite as mature as Optimus, and it generally isn't as seamless. Using the default settings, the dedicated GPU usually kicked on for games where it was needed, but to bring it online for Portal 2 (just to use an example from our testing suite) we needed to go into the Catalyst driver settings and tell the computer to use the more powerful graphics card. In the case of Minecraft, the system simply wouldn't turn the dedicated graphics chip on no matter what we did, a problem possibly related to that game's use of Java. We'll see this reflected in our benchmarks—the 7970M is quite fast, but it can require tweaking to get the best performance in every situation. If you'd rather use Nvidia's more mature Optimus technology, the x17 can easily be configured with a (cheaper, slightly slower) GeForce GTX 670MX or a (usually faster, more expensive) GeForce GTX 680M when you order it.

The x17 includes a 76.96WHr battery and is rated by Clevo for about six hours of battery life with the switchable graphics enabled. We didn't focus on scientific battery life tests for this overview—for a hardcore gaming laptop, it's not a selling point the way it is in an Ultrabook or even a budget laptop—but realistically you should be able to expect between three and four hours in general usage depending on what you're doing and how bright you light the screen. This isn't fantastic, but it's quite a bit better than these laptops have historically done—two hours or less in a bulky gaming laptop with a beefy dedicated GPU was not uncommon back in the day.

Gaming laptop, such a oxymoron imo. Spend the same amount on a more powerful desktop and a 50" tv and play controller friendly games in hi-res on a large screen is my suggestion.

There's a whole group of gamers that have neither the space for a 50" TV nor are stationary enough to make a desktop worthwhile. The gaming laptop is the compromise for them. They work ok, too. Plus, the Dell XPS series works great as a mobile development platform, as well. If you're doing graphics-heavy design and dev work, but need portability, your needs strongly overlap those that look at gaming laptops.

Some of the most important factors for a laptop purchase are display quality, and temps and fan noise at various loads. Please consider testing and including those elements in future reviews. Anandtech does a good job of it in their laptop reviews, as a reference point.

I got really tired of the exaggerated references to the weight after the first half-page or so. We get it, a powerful laptop is heavier than your ultrabook and tablet. Not shocked. But "team lifting"? "...something you'd only take off your desk if you were moving or headed to a LAN party"? Really?

The last time I had a gaming laptop it weighed slightly over 12 pounds, yet I somehow managed to schlep it back and forth to work every day, to friends' homes, to Starbucks, for years without killing myself or requiring a dolly. The heaviest laptop in this review doesn't weigh much more than my wife's laptop of that period, and that was just an average Dell.

Yes, they make laptops lighter now. But a laptop of that weight is no less portable now than it was then. You've just been spoiled. Honestly, you sound like one of those trendy Germans in the old Dieter sketches on SNL that opened their cell phones with tweezers.

I bought a Sager "laptop" in the fall of 2002--back before there were mobile equivalents of gaming components. That thing had to weight 13+ lbs and would wear your ass down walking back and forth to class. Also, the heat! But did I whine (much)? No! It was incredible!

I would have never imagined we'd become such a weak and puny people only 10 short years later.

I bought an alienware in 2003 for just shy of 5 grand, and it weighed about 14 pounds. And it was the best 14 pound thing i ever hauled around college for sure. I however never bought a replacement gaming laptop since, thats just a little on the expensive side.

I bought a Sager "laptop" in the fall of 2002--back before there were mobile equivalents of gaming components. That thing had to weight 13+ lbs and would wear your ass down walking back and forth to class. Also, the heat! But did I whine (much)? No! It was incredible!

I would have never imagined we'd become such a weak and puny people only 10 short years later.

Same, I had an 8970 that had a full desktop P4 in it. Big, heavy, had a full-size keyboard with numpad, and was really good at playing the games I wanted to play. And I was able to move it around and take it on vacations with me, which was the whole point.

Gaming laptop, such a oxymoron imo. Spend the same amount on a more powerful desktop and a 50" tv and play controller friendly games in hi-res on a large screen is my suggestion.

Or people who are forced to travel a lot for their jobs, but don't want to sit and watch TV at every hotel they stay at.

Derp.

Yes, but having done the road warrior thing myself, often you are toting a company laptop and a client laptop already. Adding a 17 incher on top of that will break even the manliest backpack. So my personal devices unfortunately have to be as small as possible.

I think 17's are most appropriate for those who use a laptop as a desktop replacement and aren't really "sit at a desk" types, and want the flexibility to haul it with them when they need to.

Either of these should have a 256GB SSD stock, especially at those prices. The cache SSD may help out the Blade, but it's just not the same thing. As long as you're spending that much, it's stupid to ignore what can be one of the best performance boosts available.

Gaming laptop, such a oxymoron imo. Spend the same amount on a more powerful desktop and a 50" tv and play controller friendly games in hi-res on a large screen is my suggestion.

Or people who are forced to travel a lot for their jobs, but don't want to sit and watch TV at every hotel they stay at.

Derp.

Derp yourself. If you're a heavy business traveler, and you lug around a 9 lb. laptop, you've got some 'splaining to do.

When I'm on travel, I have to take my work laptop because all the proprietary crap on it can't be on a personal laptop. That laptop, however, is so locked down it can't even access gmail, let alone play games or watch netflix. So I take a clevo gaming laptop. It's super heavy, but I only carry it from the taxi to the gate and from the gate to the hotel. And most of that time it's in a bag resting on my roll aboard, so I'm not even really carrying it. After that it lives in the hotel / hotel safe for the week while I carry my work notebook onsite. Having access to the full internet, games, etc is *easily* worth the tiny bit of hassle involved in lugging it to and from the airport.

Now, if I didn't have to carry my work laptop, sure, I'd probably just get an ultrabook and carry that onsite and settle for low rez gaming at the hotel.

I think of college students as one of the prime markets for gaming laptops. Not for class, mind you--some people may actually take notes with a pen and paper even in the 21st century. But think about how often college students move. Dorm room to dorm room, apartment to apartment, home for the winter and spring breaks, home for the summer, etc. I couldn't imagine having to pack up a desktop and 50" monitor each time.

I have an Alienware. Playing Skyrim with all settings maxed out when I'm not at home is so so nice. When I am at home, laptop is plumbed into a 23 inch screen and a 5.1 surround sound (and gaming keyboard and mouse). It plays a part of a mini gaming box, in other words. Plus I get to take it with me.

I think of college students as one of the prime markets for gaming laptops. Not for class, mind you--some people may actually take notes with a pen and paper even in the 21st century. But think about how often college students move. Dorm room to dorm room, apartment to apartment, home for the winter and spring breaks, home for the summer, etc. I couldn't imagine having to pack up a desktop and 50" monitor each time.

In the days before laptops were within my budget, and before LCD monitors became affordable, I lugged a desktop and ~50 lb 19" CRT up and down dorm stairs and to LAN parties all the time. Kids these days have it easy, I tell ya.

I own a Dell XPS 15 and love it. Gaming laptops definitely have their place.

The XPS 15 IS not my primary gaming machine though, I use it to game and work in the living room while my wife is watching TV or reading. That we I get to game and also stay married One of those oddities she's cool with me gaming, even with headphones on in the same room, but not if I game in a different room.

I also have a good gaming PC in my home office which I use for serious gaming, which unfortunately is not that often any more.

Looking at the specs above though, the price for the Razer laptop is pretty high compared to what i paid for my Dell.

Gaming laptop, such a oxymoron imo. Spend the same amount on a more powerful desktop and a 50" tv and play controller friendly games in hi-res on a large screen is my suggestion.

Yeah...good luck carrying that to your friend's or relative's place. I moved from dedicated box to fairly high end laptop 4 years ago and plug it into a 27" Monitor when I am at home and it has been a great experience.

I see the need for gaming laptops, having owned a monster 17" Gateway FX series the past few years. Good to see some effort made to innovate but put me with the guys who say, just lug the heavier one around. That difference is not significant enough to sacrifice any gaming horsepower.

In the days before laptops were within my budget, and before LCD monitors became affordable, I lugged a desktop and ~50 lb 19" CRT up and down dorm stairs and to LAN parties all the time. Kids these days have it easy, I tell ya.

In the days before laptops were within my budget, and before LCD monitors became affordable, I lugged a desktop and ~50 lb 19" CRT up and down dorm stairs and to LAN parties all the time. Kids these days have it easy, I tell ya.

My motto: Functionality > Fashion.I don't care if it's a 3" thick laptop or if the fans sound like an idling truck; I will always pick performance over prettiness (for a while I had a computer set up in a cardboard box cause the original case was too small for a graphics card I upgraded).

Been using a desktop replacement laptop for gaming for some time as a work at home. The factor has served well in my teenie tiny office and when I have to take it into work its pick up and go. I'd like to upgrade soon but system requirements require 18 inch screens minimum--no exceptions, resolution changes need not apply and no one can explain why. I assume its a requirement for 16:9 aspect, but I am a lowly cog.

So i have no problem with chunky laptop as long as the screen meets my needs...which many don't. Just one little inch and it's not acceptable and, as i mentioned teenie tiny, office space requirements make it hard to dual monitor anything over some small 15s (which since its not the 'default monitor', work would waggle their finger at anyway).

i've been hoping that gaming would really embrace 18 inch as a standard. Thats the only complaint I have about these laptops. make them BIGGER.

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.